New travel experiences are grand and expansive, but for every up there is also a down.
We meet. We leave.
Travel is transient like that. You connect quickly and deeply when your environment is something foreign.
And just as quickly, the environment changes yet again. And paths take people in different directions.
The rule is to not cling. But who is good at doing that?
You're sad things changed but invigorated for the change all at once.
It's tumultuous, intense, sad and fabulous.
It's one of my favorite parts of travel.
You arrive somewhere where everything is new, and after your time there, you are different. You can't not be different. We often don't notice the daily changes in our lives when we live in one place. We look back over a year and know there are differences; but it's not very clear where or when they happened. It's so much more clear when you compare who you were when you arrived while traveling to who you are when you leave.
What if you had not chosen that exact location at that exact time? Your experiences would have been totally different; not slightly. Completely different. Which means you would be different.
After a year doing this digital nomading, I oddly look forward to the heaviness of these goodbyes. That means I just experienced something impactful.
And I look forward to the new, because it is another benchmark in this ever changing life.